Online advertising is an important revenue stream for many publishers of online content. Online advertising is also an important means through which different entities, products, and services generate goodwill, brand recognition, and customer loyalty as well as promote and disseminate information about those entities, products, and services.
Online advertisement can be in the form of banner, pop-up, embedded, in-line, interstitial, and full page canvas advertisements that are presented when a user visits a page, navigates away from a page, closes a page, or is otherwise directed to a page or an advertisement. The advertisements can be provided as links, audio content, or visual content including text, images, and other multimedia content.
Advertisement blocking tools, also referred to herein as adblockers, operate to block the display and, in some cases, the loading of online advertisements on websites, such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML) pages, and other downloadable content. Adblockers can be software applications, browser components, extensions, add-ons, scripts, or any service that operates in conjunction with a web browsing application, such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox, for the purpose of blocking the display and/or loading of online advertisements.
Adblockers operate by intercepting calls to advertisements within content or preventing the advertisements from loading as part of the content. Typically, adblockers identify the advertisement calls that are to be intercepted using various blacklists. The blacklists may specify links or classes that identify various servers, services, or sources of advertisements. The blacklisted links include Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), other hyperlinks, or addressing to known advertisements or advertising providers. The blacklisted classes include function calls, scripting language, and other code that are used to embed advertisements within content. Adblockers may also block specific Cascade Style Sheet (CSS) selectors, CSS styles, and HTML elements from loading or being included as part of the content presentation. These and many other techniques may be used by different adblockers, but their objective is the same, to prevent the display or loading of advertisements that are embedded within online content.
Adblockers therefore prevent the presentation of content as originally intended by the originating content publisher. In so doing, adblockers deprive the content publisher of advertising revenue and also prevent the marketing, promotion, and information dissemination of entities, products, and services. Accordingly, there is a need to counteract the effect of adblockers and ensure that content is presented on the user device in the manner intended by the originating online content publisher.